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Lights at Comiskey Park at Jeff Davis & Baudin

I’ve been under the weather this weekend. Maybe allergies, maybe a spring cold? I don’t know, but I do know that I’ve been sick more often in New Orleans than any other place I’ve lived, and I think that has something to do with the environment. It’s not safe here. I love it anyway, but the people who live here deserve clean air, water, and soil. The weekend’s malaise kept me off the bike, but I had a dinner party to attend in Mid-City this evening and after a day spent fantasizing, I really needed to get in a quick pedal. I headed up to campus to grab a few things from my office and then took Carrollton to R.’s house, where she had a delicious lasagna and a salad, and S. brought wine, and R. and G. brought an unbelievably light and just-sweet-enough cake. After a lovely evening of food and conversation I got back on the bike and rode back Uptown through the still-thick air. I stopped on Jeff Davis and Baudin to snap a picture of Comiskey Park, all lit up. There are no lights on the bike path, but tons of lights on this still-blighted park, all overgrown and run down. For several years when I first got here this park was allegedly under construction, and there was a sign proclaiming its recovery. The sign is gone, and New Orleans owes $700,000 in unpaid bills, left behind by a company that got big tax credits on the promise that they’d rebuild the park. The company sold their tax credits for cash–I don’t understand how that all works–and the city owes. And the kids don’t have their community center. That is a travesty. The mayor wants to fix it up now, and I hope he does, but wow, corporate theft and disaster profiteering are ugly things. I wonder what the state of this corner will be when I take my last ride by later this summer.